The 4-0 decision ends the nearly decade-long court fight and spares the companies from potentially billions in cleanup costs for hundreds of thousands of contaminated homes.

Rhode Island was the first state to successfully sue former makers of lead pigment and paint, which can cause learning disabilities, brain damage and other health problems in children. A jury in 2006 found Sherwin-Williams Co., NL Industries, Inc. and Millennium Holdings LLC liable for creating a public nuisance by manufacturing a toxic product.

The state had proposed that the companies spend $2.4 billion inspecting and cleaning hundreds of thousands of Rhode Island homes believed to contain lead paint.

The ruling was immediately denounced by groups supporting punitive action against paint companies.

The ruling, thought to be the first successful appeal of a detainee's designation as an enemy combatant, ordered the government to release, transfer or hold a new military tribunal hearing for Parhat.

Parhat, a member of China's Muslim Uighur minority, claimed to have fled China in 2001 to an Uighur camp in Afghanistan. The camp was destroyed during US air strikes against the Taliban in October 2001, and he fled again to Pakistan.

It was there that Parhat was handed over to US authorities and in June 2002 was transferred to Guantanamo, where he remains.

A military tribunal assessed Parhat's status in 2004 and, while finding he had not engaged in hostilities against the United States or its allies, ruled he was an enemy combatant because he had lived at the Afghan camp.

The camp was run by the leader of an Uighur independence group, known as the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which was allegedly "associated" with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, court documents show.

The main evidence against Parhat consisted of four government intelligence documents which described activities and relationships that had "reportedly" occurred, were "said to" or "suspected" of having taken place. The court said these assertions could not be verified.

The 39-page opinion also noted the government had suggested that "several of the assertions in the intelligence documents are reliable because they are made in at least three different documents."

It cited Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark," where a character absurdly declares: "I have said it thrice: what I tell you three times is true," and said it had no reason to suggest the documents were not all based on the same source.

The opinion also noted that Parhat had made a "credible argument that ... the common source is the Chinese government, which may be less than objective with respect to the Uighurs," who allege oppression by Beijing.

In addition, the court rejected the government's assertion that statements made in the documents "are reliable because the State and Defense Departments would not have put them in intelligence documents were that not the case."

"This comes perilously close to suggesting that whatever the government says must be treated as true," the panel said, which would negate any need for a military tribunal or judicial review of tribunal decisions.

The Justice Department was quoted by the Washington Post as saying that "we are evaluating our options" following the ruling.

The unanimous decision reversed the lone victory to date against the lead paint industry.

A jury found Sherwin-Williams Co., NL Industries Inc. and Millennium Holdings LLC liable in 2006 for creating a public nuisance by manufacturing and selling a toxic product.

The state had proposed that the companies spend an estimated $2.4 billion to inspect and clean hundreds of thousands of homes built before 1980 that it said were likely to contain lead paint.

The court, in its 4-0 decision, said the state's lawsuit should have been dismissed at the outset. It said that while lead paint was a public health problem in Rhode Island, it wasn't the companies' responsibility to clean it up because they had no control over how the paint was used.

Sandy Blunt was forced out as Workforce Safety and Insurance's director last December. He had been the agency's top executive since April 2004.

Blunt is accused of illegally spending $7,200 on bonuses for Jodi Bjornson, the top lawyer at Workforce Safety and Insurance; John Halvorson, the agency's chief of employer services; and Mark Armstrong, its communications director.

He also is charged with making $11,384 in unauthorized expenditures over a number of months for food, gifts, trinkets and other items for employee meetings and functions, and on meals for state legislators.

The money paid for grill rentals, trolley rides to a meeting at Fort Lincoln State Park, four cases of peppermint patties, Fourth of July holiday items, and candy and balloons for "Bring Your Kids to Work Day," among other items.

Prosecutors say the misspending on employee gifts is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Awarding the bonuses, they say, is a lesser felony, punishable by five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

The Georgia Supreme Court acknowledged with its 6-1 decision that banishing convicted criminals from the state is illegal, but it upheld a tactic by judges who ban them from living in all but one of Georgia's 159 counties.

That's what happened to Gregory Mac Terry, who was restricted from living everywhere in Georgia except rural Toombs County after he pleaded guilty in 1995 to charges he assaulted and stalked his estranged wife.

Defense attorneys call the strategy "de facto" banishment. Prosecutors say the orders are a way to rid criminals from populated areas and protect victims from repeat offenses. In Terry's case, they said, the restrictions are needed to protect his wife.

Writing for the majority, Justice Harris Hines said judges can legally skirt the ban on banishment when they restrict convicts like Terry from all but one county.

The Jewish human rights organization on Friday said the Baden-Baden state court judge in charge of the case had disallowed German police requests on several occasions for telephone taps of Heim's relatives and an old friend who had been in contact with the fugitive.

But Heinz Heister, presiding judge and spokesman for the court, said that in the case of the friend, there had been no appeal of the court's decision, and that the only time a decision disallowing "investigative measures" was challenged, the Baden-Baden court's ruling was upheld.

"Investigative measures — even in the case of a person urgently suspected of many counts of murder — are held to certain boundaries by the constitution and the laws," Heister said in a statement.

Heim, 94, was known for his sadism as a doctor at the Nazi's Mauthausen concentration camp. He was able to flee before authorities came to arrest him in the southern town of Baden-Baden in 1962, however, and his whereabouts today remain unknown.